Parallels

6:50 am

Sat January 10, 2015

James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, with Egon Schiele's 1915 work, Krumau Town Crescent I. It's one of about 1,000 works of Nazi-confiscated art the museum has received. The museum has no record of who owned the painting before it was taken by the Nazis. In some 40 cases, the museum has returned artworks when heirs were found.

Before and during World War II, the Nazis seized up to 600,000 works of art from all across Europe. This has created a long-running drama that is still playing out from movie studios in Hollywood to museums in Israel.

If you saw last year's movie The Monuments Men, starring George Clooney, then you know the story line. Toward the end of the war, American and Allied forces sent teams on a treasure hunt through Europe.

Amid all the holiday celebrations, you may have missed this story from overseas.

An Egyptian court announced a retrial for three journalists from Al Jazeera who have been languishing in jail for more than a year for the crime of reporting the news. The scheduled retrial is a small step in the right direction for a nation that has seen its historic revolution of just four years ago almost totally reversed.